Final Year Project on a Fish-Like Morphing Wing - Rui Wu

Morphing wing can improve aerodynamic efficiency and enlarge flight regime of aircraft. The presented research studied an innovative morphing airfoil concept, which is consisted of two components: The compliant truss structure that allows morphing with multiple degree-of-freedoms but possesses high stiffness when constrained by actuators; the actuation system with linear ultrasonic motor and compliant runners that can fully control the morphing structure. The video clip shows a morphing demonstrator driven by servos. A discovery has been made from CFD analysis and wind tunnel tests: the ability to morph in different shape changing strategies (thanks to the multiple degree-of-freedoms) further enlarges flight regime, since the strategies outperform each other at different flight conditions. The diagram below shows aerodynamic efficiency across a wide lift regime. It can be seen that the efficiency in the high lift regime can be improved by adapting different morphing strategies. Meanwhile, the research also